(So I have now been teaching for almost four weeks and I feel like I have had enough of the experience to properly write about it. I have so much to say that I'll try to separate this into sections to make reading a little bit less confusing as well as creating some structure for myself.)
The Daily Commute
My days begin like this: I wake up at about 5:15 and take a cold shower (we don't have hot water in my apartment building), get dressed, and leave by 5:45. I walk through the market, which is very active even in the early morning (who knows when the fuck those people get up), for about a mile to get to the ferry. I take the ferry across the river, walk a block to the train station, and board the train for Bang Pa-In, which lasts about 20-30 min. I then take a song-taw from the train station to my school. All in all, my daily commute is about an hour there and back, yet I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world. As cheesy as it may sound, there's a certain satisfaction that comes with knowing that I walk a mile before the sun comes up (by the way, there are several roosters in the market. Growing up in the city, I was always under the impression that they crow a few times and that's it. Actually they never shut the fuck up. Seriously, they crow like 50 times) to put in an honest day's labor. I come home exhausted every day and haven't once regretted coming over here.
My Classes (Age and Level)
But anyway, onto my school. As far as Thai schools go, my school is incredibly nice. It has about 2,000 students, ranging from grades M1-M6 (7th-12th grades in America). Each grade is divided into 10 classes of about 50 students each, such as M4/1-M4/10. The lower the number on the right, the better the students. 1's and 2's are the honors students, while 3's and 4's are fairly smart as well. The 5-10's know little to no English, although there is usually at least a few students in these classes that seem to have a pretty good grasp, leading me to wonder how the students are divided in the first place. I have M2/8-2/10, all the M3's, and M4/1-M4/4. I have the 1-4's twice a week and everyone else once a week. If you're good at math then you know that means I teach about 27 classes a week. While this is about 7 classes more than most English teachers teach, I like my school enough that I don't really mind. There are two other phrang at my school, one of whom, Stuart, has been living and teaching in Thailand for the past 5 years. He has taught at four schools and says that ours is easily the best one.
General Classroom Structure and Design
The classes themselves are supposed to be 55 min. each, but in reality I teach more like 35-40 min. I've mentioned this before, but I'll elaborate: Thai people have no sense of time. I've theorized that this is partly because they have 6 different ways to tell time, only one of which makes any sense. By the time you've finished giving someone the time and they've finished making sense of it an hour has passed and you're late anyway. This is coupled to the fact that Thai's are never in a hurry to make sure that nothing ever starts when it's supposed to. So the students stroll in 10-15 min. late. On the rare occasion when they are on time, there's mutual awkwardness between them and I, because each of us did not expect the other to actually show up on time. When enough students have wandered in, one student will shout, "Please stand up!" The entire class will stand and say in unison, "Good morning/afternoon teacher." I will then say, "Good morning/afternoon students. Please sit down," to which they will respond, "Thank you teacher" and sit down. Apparently, they have to stand until you give them permission to sit down, meaning that in theory I could make them stand for the entire class period, but I like my students, so I just tell them to sit down right away. When the bell sounds to end the period, a student will again shout, "Please stand up." They will all say, "Thank you, teacheeeerrrrrr." I will usually say, "You're welcome students, have a great day," but most of the students bolt before I'm can finish speaking.
The classrooms themselves are not air-conditioned. The first two weeks were agonizing, and I would literally sweat buckets which my students thought was hilarious. When I would get back to my apartment in the afternoons, I would take my clothes off and every article was literally soaking wet. There might be a small dry patch somewhere on my pants, but even this was rare. Fortunately, it's winter now, meaning that the temperature has dropped to a chilly 80 degrees. If nothing else at least I'm no longer sweating.
Other than the lack of air-con, the rooms are fairly similar to American classrooms. They are about 60 desks crammed into each room, divided into rows of two-by-two. The majority of my classrooms are basically gender-segregated--the girls tend to sit on the left, the boys on the right. The exception, naturally, are the lady-boys (I'll get into more on them later). There is at least one lady-boy in each class, and if it wasn't already apparent, the fact that they are sitting amidst a sea of girls makes it blatantly obvious. Not unlike American classrooms, it's fairly easy to spot the good students, as they sit in the center block. The peripheries tend to be occupied by the bad students. The ratio of good/bad students usually depends on the level. The majority of the higher-level students tend be good students, whereas in the lower-level classes, you may have only 2 students out of 50 that pay attention and try to learn.
Even though I only see my students twice a week, they are actually taking multiple English classes daily. The Thai teachers teach them grammar, whereas I'm responsible for conversational English. Thus, when I was given topics by my Thai teachers for 3/1-3/4 and 4/1-4/4, they heavily emphasized speaking. I was never actually given any topics for 3/5-3/10 and 2/8-2/10, so I've basically been teaching them whatever I want. It's kind of unfortunate, but the Thai school system essentially views 5-10's as a lost cause (at least when it comes to speaking English) and has absolutely no expectation that they will learn anything. This can be kind of liberating for me, as I'm free to teach them anything, and if they actually remember it, well great. Thus, I've been teaching my 2/9's a bunch of cultural English words like "swagger," "posse," "what's up?," "yeaaaah," and "naaww." They fucking love it.
Thai Teachers
All of my classrooms have Thai teachers in them. At first their presence made me really uncomfortable; I assumed that they kind of hated me because I'm half their age and have no teaching experience, yet I make 3x more money than they do. Some of my friends have told me horror stories where this is the case, and the Thai teachers intentionally rile up the students to get back at the phrang. Fortunately, this is not the case at my school. I think my teachers generally like me and appreciate the energy and excitement that I bring to the classroom even if they have the occasional (justified) concern about my competency. The teachers are incredibly helpful in the classroom. In the rowdier classrooms, they help maintain some semblance of order, although to be fair I try not to rely on them. They will also help translate or explain some of the more difficult concepts to the students. Recently, I taken to alternating between English and Thai, especially in my lower level classes because it helps me practice my Thai (the students love to correct my pronunciations), but there are a lot of things I can't say which my teachers can.
My Status at School and the Students' Reactions to Me
In another post I mentioned how much Thai's love white people. There is nowhere where this is more evident than at a Thai school. I am a celebrity in every sense of the word. As I walk around my schools' massive campus, students run up to me and say, "Hello teacher," or "Hello Scott." They also want to shake my hand constantly. I told several of the boys that my favorite football team (because I don't really like American football and I've been hanging out with a bunch of Englishmen, I now refuse to call it "soccer) is Fulham, so they will shout, "FULHAM!" as I walk by. The boys love to talk with me about football, even the ones who speak next to no English. My status as phrang teacher makes me a little bit different than the normal student-teacher relationship. Many of the boys tend to view me more as their buddy than their teacher. If I were on top of my game, I'd discourage this.
The girls present an even bigger problem. Thai girls are incredibly flirtatious, and I hear "Teacher handsome" or "Teacher beautiful" at least 150 times a day. Unfortunately, I only exasperated the problem when I told my classes that I was only 22. You should have seen the way the girls' eyes lit up, and I immediately received a dozen requests for my telephone number and my email address. I'm also asked constantly whether I have a girlfriend (or boyfriend, from the lady-boys). I wouldn't have answered except my Thai teachers egged me into answering. I kind of wish I would have lied and said yes, but I (stupidly) answered truthfully and said no. There's even a group of girls that I refer to collectively as my "fanclub" who follow me around in between classes. I'd be lying if I were to say that I didn't secretly enjoy this attention, but it's probably not helping my personality; I was already kind of vain, now I'm almost insufferable. Granted, I realize that all of these girls are not serious and that for many of them, the hero-worship is more of a joke, but even considering this I'd speculate that 75% of my female students (and a few lady-boys as well) have some kind of a crush on me. Remember, I'm young (most teachers are well over 30), white (in my last post I detailed how far this trait goes in Thailand), and (not be immodest) relatively good-looking. Those for good enough for me when I was in junior high and high school.
From what I can gather, you never really lose your celebrity status. Stuart and Kristin receive similar attention and they have been teaching there for a year. This isn't the worst thing in the world; if nothing else, any time you need to kill some time in any of your classes, you can just tell them information about yourself, and your students will listen with rapt attention. As I mentioned earlier, we are regarded differently than Thai teachers. For one, students will try things with you that they wouldn't dream of with a Thai teacher (like asking for your telephone number). I sometimes shudder to think what they're saying among themselves during class. I've tried to sell them into thinking that I actually understand more Thai than I let on, and just ignored anything inappropriate, but they've definitely seen through this facade.
(I didn't originally intend to, but I'm going to have to write about my teaching experience in installments. Look for Part 2 sometime this weekend.)
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